Julie Chen's New Eyelids

Did She Sell-Out Her Epicanthus?

Most readers will have heard by now of Julie Chen's revelations on the television show, The Talk, in which she discussed her eye-lid surgery. The link to the video is here.

In short, Chen revealed how as a young television reporter in Dayton, Ohio, her world was turned upside down when her boss informed her that she would never anchor on that station because audiences wouldn't be able to relate to her because of her race and racial characteristics. In addition to that, she was told that the shape of her eyes made her appear disinterested and bored when conducting interviews. Insulted, hurt, and with shattered confidence, she resolved to leave her job, and so she consulted with a "big-time" agent who promptly reiterated what her boss had said, insisting that he would not represent her unless she undergo eyelid surgery to make her eyes "look bigger". After much soul-searching, Chen decided to go ahead and have the work done, after which she relates that her career took off.  Of course, the response to the news has been mixed with some commentators labeling her as some kind of sell-out, or traitor to the Asian race, but I think this reaction is without nuance.

I applaud Chen's revelations because she spoke about anti-Asian racism on a mainstream television show, and she did so in a way that clearly showed the emotional and psychological pain that it can cause. A television show presenter of Chen's stature - and perhaps popularity - speaking about the pain of racism, makes anti-Asian racism personal. This is important because one aspect of anti-Asian racism is about denying personhood of individuals and applying stereotyping so that any Asian person's given racial characteristics become associated with negative and demeaning qualities that block empathy or commonality with Asians.

Most importantly for me, is that Chen made mention of racism she experienced at the hands of other children in the school environment. As I have written in several places previously, it may be possible to gauge how ingrained anti-Asian prejudices are in the US by observing the degree to which these attitudes find expression amongst children. My guess is that almost all Asians who have been raised in the US and go through the American school system have experienced racial harassment, bullying, or violence, at the hands of their peers at some point in their childhood. It's difficult to deny racism when it manifests through the children.

Yet, despite the fact that anti-Asian racism is so ingrained that even the children express it, the phenomenon is rarely discussed or even acknowledged in the mainstream. Asians themselves seem reluctant sometimes to speak candidly about anti-Asian racism. But Chen has done just that, and while watching the video, and observing the discomfort of the other presenters - save the two African-American ones, perhaps - as well as the hushed anticipation of the audience, I rather fancied that there was embarrassment and a sense of "we're busted", kind of like when you shine a light on cockroaches.

I think that it would be too easy to say that Chen should never have had the surgery because it was somehow "giving in", but I think this is ungenerous in the extreme. One of the reasons racism is so potent is that there is no easy defence against it. Racial violence is the one exception to this rule - if you are the target of violence, it is natural to defend yourself physically and so the response to racist violence is obvious. Non-physically-violent racism, on the other hand, has no natural response but it leaves emotional and physical scars that are hard to even identify let alone heal because they become so much a part of a person's worldview.

Because of this, it is highly unfair to judge Chen's actions because no-one truly knows how they would or could react if they were in the same situation. Should she have slapped her boss and stormed out? Should she have made a complaint? Should she have brought legal action? The problem with these is that to do any of these things could have made her a pariah in the industry, but it has to be recognized that her determination to succeed has put her in a position in the mainstream media where she can speak directly and honestly about anti-Asian racism. In that light, it seems self-righteous - and perhaps a little petty - to judge her surgery as some kind of affront to Asian racial identity. The fact is, that Chen still looks Asian - very Asian, in fact, and even though you may be able to see more iris, she in no way looks "more Caucasian".

And this brings me to the only caveat I have about this subject. Chen seems to suggest that the surgery was a significant factor  in her rise to success, but I'm a tad skeptical. But if you compare the side-by-side photo below of a before and after surgery, there are several things that stand out that give me pause. Firstly, in the before, Chen looks dowdy and somewhat old-fashioned. Her hair is an 80's cut, her make-up is not very sophisticated, and even a little heavy-handed. On the right, the make-up is refined and sophisticated, and the hair is contemporary and stylish. Secondly, Chen mentions that her confidence was shot (of course!), and this is apparent in the photo - the face on the right is confident and open, the face on the left is open, but not confident.

The point is that there are other factors that could account for Chen's success, that only coincide with her having surgery, and that she could have achieved similar results just in the way she applied her make-up. Granted, her agent only became enthusiastic about her after she had the surgery, but who can say that if he had shown similar enthusiasm for her prior to the surgery that she wouldn't have succeeded anyway? So my caveat is that Chen is inadvertently promoting a surgical procedure by believing it to have more transformational power than it actually possesses.

At the end of the day, she made a personal decision that no-one really has the right judge. Granted, it brings up issues of upholding beauty standards that put unfair pressure on minorities to emulate, but the process has brought her to a place where she is willing and able shine a light on anti-Asian racism, and that is the thing we should focus on, and not personalize her decision as though it was intended as a personal insult to Asians.

Apocalypse Now.

The Power Of Habit.

I was surprised to discover that the recent anxiety-fest whipped up by mischievous media disseminators over the supposed Mayan prediction of a December 21st Doomsday, was actually a global phenomenon, and not limited to scare-buzz-thirsty America. Chinese authorities arrested Doomsdayers for who knows what reason, but even here in Muslim Istanbul I was surprised to discover that there was some degree of anxiety amongst the locals (at least the ones I know). As it turned out, the 21st did prove to be somewhat calamitous, albeit not quite the Doomsday that was predicted.

Unfortunately for myself and my neighbours our building did, in fact, make an attempt to destroy us on the one day where any event out of the ordinary might be received with greater anxiety than it might otherwise deserve. As Doomsday became Dooms-evening the building lost power accompanied by a loud explosion-sounding noise. Since the city experiences regular rolling black-outs, and transformers tend to blow-up occasionally (because the grid was designed to provide power for five, not seventeen million who actually live here), I didn't pay much attention - the transformer is three streets away, after all. It was only when I heard a second and third "explosiony" noise - accompanied by some terrified yelps - that I decided to step onto the balcony and look out, which was when I noticed several neighbours from the lower floors had evacuated to the street.

I also noticed that the hub where all of the electricity wires of the building connect was sparkling like a firework. In short, what had happened was that a broken pipe was leaking water into the electrical works causing the arcing and mini-explosions. This was my cue to get out of the building. It so happened that their were around eleven other neighbours - all women, all wearing headscarves - who had the same idea, yet, instead of going down from my top floor apartment, they were coming up. What I didn't realize was that they were trying to escape via access from an adjacent building - I confusedly presumed that they were simply going up to give themselves as much time as possible for emergency crews to rescue them, so I indicated for them to enter my home for respite. This is where it became interesting.

Fully panicked - and some even hyperventilating with hysteria - this group of women simply followed my instructions even though they knew that wasn't the way of escape; one by one, following custom, they removed their shoes and politely entered my home. Finally we sorted out the actual plan of escape, and everyone got out from the adjacent building. Meanwhile, those neighbours who had already escaped downstairs were standing around bewildered and dazed, huddled together in a group that moved in herd-like unison in response to the instructions of the recently arrived fire department. Absurdly, in those moments I had the profound (for me!) realization that I had just witnessed the process by which fear becomes foundational for those seeking to manipulate a group or society, and it clarified why fear-mongering plays is such an important strategy for those propagating anti-Asian prejudice.

There are three aspects of fear that render societies vulnerable to manipulation: the first is a desire to maintain the comfort and familiarity of habit; the second is the tendency to look to a higher authority for direction - people want to believe that someone, somewhere, knows what is going on and has the experience and power to make it right. Thus, scared people will abdicate personal responsibility and agency because they feel safer believing that they are being taken care of by some external entity whose ability to resolve the situation exceeds their own. The women who entered my apartment clung to habit and familiarity by, absurdly, removing their shoes in the middle of an emergency. Unquestioningly, they followed my instructions to enter my apartment, just like the bewildered crowd below blankly followed the instructions of the emergency crews - highlighting how the fearful will follow anyone who merely seems to have a plan or who has the air of authority (real or imagined).

It puts election-time Asian-targeted fear-mongering into perspective. If a politician can scare the electorate enough with insinuations that Asian economies are deliberately harming Americans' economic prosperity with the goal of "taking over", then, as the authoritative antidote, he (or she) can easily manipulate them into following directions. And this is the third aspect of fear that makes a group easy to manipulate; the anger which always follows fear. People get angry, in part, as a means to process whatever trauma they have experienced. After a couple of hours of standing outside in the cold, unable to be around things of comfort, the dazed neighbours (and myself) started to get angry as heated discussions arose about who was at fault, or simply why such a thing could happen - tellingly, those who shouted the loudest got heard, even though some of what was said didn't make too much sense.

When people are angry, reason and rationality fly out the window, and when coupled with a fear-enabled tendency to follow anyone with seeming authority, the results are often ugly. And this is one of the major obstacles facing the Asian minority of America; political and cultural fear-mongering that trickles down to influence the lives of Americans of Asian descent. It requires a remarkable feat of self-delusion to not notice the similarities between political outrage at the economic success of Japan or China, and the ongoing resentful outrage towards Asians who economically outpace urban black communities, or the occasionally shrill cries of alarm at the ubiquity of Asian students in higher (and secondary) education.

In all these cases, the underlying insinuation is that the things familiar to Americans are being taken away - unfairly, of course - and that something (of an Oriental nature) is to blame. Furthermore, not only is familiarity disappearing, what is left is being overrun, or "taken over". The results are often a violent backlash or, in the case of Asians in education, calls for action that would fundamentally exempt Asian-Americans from equality and permit the re-institutionalization of exclusion in education. It could even be said that Jeremy Lin experienced some of this in action. Although, he was embraced by many, his presence caused a backlash in which some members of the media sought to contextualize Lin through the more habitually familiar framework of racial mockery.

This is why anti-Asian racism remains so openly pervasive - it is politically expedient to have an established scapegoat against whom anger and resentment can be directed, and fear-mongering promotes social cohesion and identity by providing society with a common enemy, and the illusion of common goals to overcome it. Thus, worst of all, thinking of Asians negatively is so ingrained in America's identity that it has become a cultural habit as opposed to being an ideology. Ideologically, Asians can represent positive things (and often do), but this is significantly undermined by the habits of xenophobia which are emotional and irrational and thus more difficult to identify let alone address. In some ways, Asians have come to represent an apocalypse; the unwanted and cataclysmic obliteration of the familiar and beloved, and so maintaining the habit and familiarity of anti-Asian attitudes is the natural antidote to this fear.

Wrong Again!

The Folly Of Taking Asians For Granted.

One of the more surprising outcomes of the recent Presidential election was the overwhelming support shown for Obama by Asian-Americans. Almost invisible during the campaigns (particularly in the Romney camp) the way that Asians voted went against all expectation. my sense is that this is because, as I've written before, much of the commentary that I have read that has been written by western "experts" on Asia and its peoples often seems made up or largely coloured by preconceived ideas that can only be described as chauvinistic in nature.

A recent report from the Pew Corporation seemed to suggest that Asian-Americans have achieved a level of economic success equal to, or slightly better than, that of the white majority. In terms of both household and personal income, Asian-Americans rate as some of America's highest earners. Although disputed by many Asian-American commentators for not taking account of higher per-household earner rates amongst Asian families, and for completely ignoring around 17% of Asian-Americans from some Southeast Asian groups whose high poverty rates and chronically low employment and below poverty-line income would have lowered average income rates for the entire group considerably, the Pew report was widely lauded as evidence of a successful immigrant minority group that has moved passed issues of racial inequality and "come good".

Most importantly, for this essay, is the fact that the findings of the Pew report seemed to show that Asian-Americans were almost no brainers for the election - their income levels, and even purchasing trends, all suggested (according to some) that the community would be full-on for the Republican cause. The completely unpredicted outcome of the election has shocked many of the commentators on Asian-Americans, although I would suggest that Asian-Americans themselves are far from surprised that so many of us would vote the way we did. What this highlights is the degree to which the dialogue on Asian-Americans is out of touch with the reality of our experience and that much of the certainty and truth about what Asian-Americans think and believe derives less from what they say about themselves and more from self-proclaimed "experts" taking advantage of the fact that Asian-American opinions are invisible in most of the narratives about them.

It probably should go without saying that much of the thinking on Asian-Americans is built fundamentally on a foundation of stereotype and gross generalization. The outcome of the election has defecated in the gaping mouths of shocked observers whose smug assertion of Asian predictability has been shown to be an embarrassing folly. What it revealed is that despite commentators claiming to "know" the Asian-American community, much of what is predicted about us must be appallingly ignorant and perhaps even informed more by cultural and racial stereotypes than an unbiased assessment of reality.

So what does the outcome of the election say about Asian-Americans? In terms of stereotypes the Asian vote seemingly belies several things that are believed about us in one fell swoop. Asians are often derided for being driven by money over everything else - making them a-political in their pursuit of the dollar - unconscientious and inconsiderate of social inequality, and racist towards African-Americans. Strange then that such a group would vote for a black man, whose party stands for social justice, greater inclusiveness, and fairer wealth distribution. It is no longer politically expedient to assign qualities and beliefs to a group of people about whom very little is actually known whilst cynically excluding them from the dialogue. 

And it is really quite a simple concept to understand - reaching out to Asians like they are actual human beings instead of a formless mass of de-individuated statistics with no human qualities might yield more positive results. Despite being not yet substantial enough to necessarily swing anything less than the tightest election - although this is likely to change in the not too distant future - the Asian vote illustrates how deceiving it can be to rely on income stats, and the opinion of self-proclaimed experts, when discussing Asian-Americans. These tactics have been used as a means to feign inclusiveness and understanding, whilst in reality is a way of avoiding meaningful engagement.

A Lesser Racism?

Choosing Your Poison.

I came across an article on a website called "Jade Luck Club" written by a Chinese-American woman named Ying Ma. Ma has written a book called "Chinese Girl In The Ghetto" (which I haven't read), in which she describes her experiences growing up as an immigrant in the pre-dominantly black neighbourhood of Oakland, California. In the book Ma describes how she and other Asians were (and are) targeted for racially motivated violence and harassment by some members of the black community, and how this often violent anti-Asian racism seems almost universally present where Asian and black minorities find themselves living in close proximity to each other in America's inner-cities. Ma is also an economist and runs a blog (here) in which she writes on the ideologies behind the economic systems of China and the US as well as expounding further on black/Asian racial disharmony and racism.

Although I find plenty of points on her website where I disagree with her - her overzealous (and apparently xenophobic) anti-China commentary, and her economic and social conservatism, - her article on Jade Luck is a straight-forward account of what seems to be an increasingly pervasive phenomenon of black on Asian violence, as well as honestly highlighting the apparent evasion and indifference from Asian-American activists and community leaders when it comes to speaking out about this problem. It is this aspect of the issue - the lack of  an assertive Asian-American voice in addressing the problem - that I will focus on because of the many things it reveals about the experience of being Asian in America.

To begin, here are some excerpts describing Ma's experiences and accounts of African-American anti-Asian racism......

At age ten, I immigrated from China to Oakland , California , a city filled with crime, poverty, and racial tension. In elementary school, I didn’t wear name-brand clothing or speak English. My name soon became “Ching Chong,” “Chinagirl,” and “Chow Mein.” Other children laughed at my language, my culture, my ethnicity, and my race. ......... 

........But even when I sat in the front, fire crackers, paper balls, small rocks, and profanity were thrown at me and the other “stupid Chinamen.” The label “Chinamen” was dished out indiscriminately to Vietnamese, Koreans, and other Asians...... 

.......My English was by now more fluent than that of those who insulted me, but most of the time I still said nothing to avoid being beaten up. In addition to everything else thrown at me, a few times a week I was the target of sexual remarks vulgar enough to make Howard Stern blush. When I did respond to the insults, I immediately faced physical threats or attacks....... 

........The racial harassment wasn’t limited to bus rides. It surfaced in my high school cafeteria, where a middle-aged Chinese vendor who spoke broken English was told by rowdy students each day at lunch time to “Hurry up, you dumb Ching!” On the sidewalks, black teenagers and adults would creep up behind 80-year-old Asians and frighten them with sing-song nonsense: “Yee-ya, Ching-chong, ah-ee, un-yahhh!” At markets and in the streets of poor black neighborhoods, Asians would be told, “Why the hell don’t you just go back to where you came from!”....... 

......In poor neighborhoods across this country Asians endure daily racial hatred just as I did. Because of their language deficiencies, their small size, their fear of violent confrontations, they endure in silence.......

Harrowing, yet experiences of this kind have come to almost define the character of black/Asian relations in recent years, with stories of anti-Asian violence against children and adults alike becoming an ever more frequent phenomenon. The accepted (and acceptable) narratives - as Ma notes - cite economic disparities as the motivation for the violence, yet as Ma points out.....

In any case, the economic disparities rationale falls apart in the many instances where racism flourishes in the absence of class differences. At San Francisco’s Hunters Point public housing complex, for instance, low-income Southeast Asian residents, who are in the minority, have consistently encountered racial harassment from their black neighbors. Racial slurs, physical threats, violence, and destruction of property have festered for years. Philip Nguyen of the Southeast Asian Community Center, who has worked on the case for years, notes that there are no economic differences between the Asian and black families in the complex. The Asians, he says, are very quiet and have made every effort to befriend the black residents, yet serious friction has persisted for ten years. 

Even worse (and this is an argument put forward by many Asians themselves) is the accusation that Asians are racist and therefore bring the prejudice and racial violence upon themselves. I have to give kudos to Ma for having the courage to write on this subject when so many of us in the Asian-American community simply avoid the issue altogether or deflect legitimate dialogue on the subject by making Asians responsible for anti-Asian prejudice. 

What I think Ma misses is the larger context of anti-Asian racism in the US (and the western world in general)  within which black on Asian violence thrives. In fact, looking at some of the content of Ma's blog I would say that  she has actually followed the lead of those Asian activists whom she criticizes by downplaying (or not even mentioning) the anti-Asian attitudes that pervade mainstream American culture and society. So although Ma should be praised for speaking out about the reality of the black/Asian conflict, the failure to place black anti-Asian prejudice in its proper social context dilutes her effectiveness.

There is no difference between an American politician (blue or red, and most usually white) goading American society into boycotting the products of an Asian economy by stoking xenophobic attitudes that create resentment and hostility for political gain, and an on-the-make black community leader goading a black community to boycott the local Asian-owned 711 for the same reason - all based on largely unfounded and never proven claims that Asians (both in the US and in Asia) are somehow cheating Americans out of their economic prosperity, or exploiting Americans in some way, or simply taking wealth that rightfully belongs to Americans. Likewise, there is no difference between a popular and well-loved American celeb pulling his or her eyes into slits and ching-chonging their heart away, and an African-American doing the same to an Asian on the school bus, Asian restaurant, or on the street. 

Furthermore, it is almost impossible not to consider a likely connection between America's acceptance and depiction of casual violence towards Asians (men in particular) in the media and the increasingly casual and seeming normalization of anti-Asian violence in society. This cultural depiction of gratuitous violence against Asians is typically sadistic in nature, and is portrayed as the almost preferred mode of dealing with conflict with Asian people. Sometimes - as was the case in Men In Black III which re-enacted and made the racial murder of Vincent Chin into a cartoon to be enjoyed by America's children- the sadistic violence is presented as something that is funny and comical. Yet, always this violence is shown to be something that is deserved and therefore justified - just like in American society in general and mirrored in black on Asian violence in particular - anti-Asian prejudice is somehow legitimized by the assertion that it is various qualities in the Asian character itself that causes the violence against them.

What is even more perplexing is that Ma herself engages in demonization of China and Chinese people and this is where she shoots herself in the foot and defeats her own crusade against anti-Asian violence in the black community. A peculiar feature of anti-Asian prejudice is that it is heavily driven by a "bleedover" of resentment stemming from the combative and xenophobic political or economic nature of America's foreign policy agenda with various Asian economic powers. By making such simplistic, jingoistic, and inflammatory, observations on China and its people, Ma mimics those who propagate and legitimize that aspect of American culture that demonizes Asians and leads to casual prejudice (and violence) towards them. 

The screaming irony is deafening. Ma criticizes Asian activists for their reticence on (and blindness to) black on Asian violence - and rightfully so! - yet she is guilty of blinding herself to the larger picture of white America's incessant cultural expressions of xenophobia that legitimizes and normalizes the very casual anti-Asian violence that exists in black America. Anti-Asian racism in the black community is simply a subset of the general culture of anti-Asian prejudice that characterizes America's attitudes towards Asia and its peoples.   American culture models behaviour towards Asians that makes mockery and harassment the cultural norm - why should we expect African-Americans to have different values than the general culture? It makes no sense to complain about the black racism coming from the back of the bus, but ignore the white racists who are seemingly free to broadcast their racial harassment into your living room on a regular basis.

Now one might argue that we don't see white people going around violently attacking Asians for no reason (I don't necessarily believe this is true) and thus American culture plays no role in how people behave towards Asians. But this is where the unique experiences that divide the races plays a role in how America's culturally promoted anti-Asian racism manifests in society. If you are live in an environment that is violent, hopeless, and offers you little opportunity, then your anti-Asian racism will manifest as violence. If you have the privileges of opportunity that being white offers then your anti-Asian racism might be likely to manifest non-violently - but it does manifest. The racism of the tenured college professor who limits Asian enrollment because he doesn't like Asians causes as much damage as a black thug in the hood.

This doesn't justify black on Asian violence by citing poverty as a cause, it simply means that because American culture nurtures and promotes a culture in which demeaning behaviours and ways of conceiving of Asians through mockery, celeb harassment through the mass media, and ubiquitous fantasies of sadistic violence in film and television, society sees this as the acceptable mode of interaction. This is why there is little outcry against anti-Asian racism from mainstream America - it is simply considered normal to mock, harass, and, if necessary (or desired), violently attack Asian people. Clearly, there is no way that black on Asian racism can be divorced from the phenomenon of mainstream American anti-Asian prejudice and addressing one without acknowledging the other is a self-defeating exercise.

What all of this highlights is the lack of an autonomous Asian-American narrative or point of view that stands separate from the black minority narrative of social oppression, as well as separate from the white narrative of  opportunity and privilege. The truth is, that the Asian experience has and does traverse both these narratives in a way that makes it impossible to make sweeping generalizations about Asian-Americans and their experience. As illustrated by Ma in her essays and her own experiences of dealing with apathetic and seemingly indifferent Asian "leaders", Asians seem to polarize between the black and white extremes and take sides accordingly - victims of black racism seek white allies, victims of white racism seek black allies. In either case (and as followed by Ma), the price is that each side downplays the anti-Asian racism of the ally with whom they have chosen to align. This approach offers refuge - somewhat - but cannot possibly address the underlying issues that lead to anti-Asian prejudice.

Choosing between two different types of racism is not really a choice but it is a feature of the Asian-American struggle against prejudice that we have to seemingly accept racism in one form or another because we have not successfully forged an all important "third option" that recognizes the specific narratives of anti-Asianism as a unique historical phenomenon that lies at the root of much of the inequalities and conflicts we see not only in the US but across the world. It is fundamentally the same as a choice between poisons.

Black racism can only disappear simultaneously as white racism - we can't pretend that because white anti-Asian racism isn't violent (is that even true?) that it is less damaging - the framework of anti-Asian racism as it manifests in the US is a construction of white power without which black racism could not propagate. Overall, Ma must be praised for her willingness to speak out on a subject that many Asian-Americans find taboo - black on Asian violence - but at the same time her seeming blindness to ingrained white cultural anti-Asian prejudice contributes little to a meaningful solution to the problem.

A Perfect Crime.......

The L.A Riots.

It's hard to believe that twenty years have passed since the Los Angeles riots erupted into the most violent urban disturbance in recent history. Although the US has seen many riots in its cities over the years, the LA riots were somewhat unique because the racial antagonism went beyond the traditional white/black hostility and brought to light racist attitudes between ethnic minorities.

Of course, although it was the acquittal of the policemen who participated in the beating of Rodney King that sparked the rampage, in the ensuing days it was the tension and hostility between the African-American and immigrant Korean community that became the focus of the media's commentary and attention. During the unrest, Korean businesses were targeted by the mob who first looted and then set fire to them.

Naturally, the disturbance was turned into a major television event by a media who, with a good degree of cynicism, chose to spin the riot like an old-time movie in which the various parties involved were characterized as good-guys and victims (the rioters), bad-guys (the Koreans), and the well-meaning but helpless (the police). Its fair to say that fair and unbiased reporting seemed to go out the window - particularly in their coverage of the reaction of some Korean shop-owners.

As you may discern from this report from 1992 - which to me is a good example of the uncompromising and reproachful character of the media's attitude towards the Koreans - the fact that these shop-keepers were defending themselves and their property elicited much sickening condemnation from many self-righteous observers whose own lives and livelihoods were not under threat, but who seemed to insist on a saintly martyr approach to racially motivated mob violence by those who were targeted.

What is most striking to me is how, both then and now, the racist targeting of the Koreans by the mob has been either ignored, denied, or justified as an understandable act by a frustrated minority. Even coverage of the riots in Europe, where I was living at the time, sought to villify the Korean immigrants and characterize the violence being committed against them as somehow deserved.

Of course, in truth, the 1992 riots came at a time when anti-Asian hostility in America was particularly prevalent. The 1970's and 80's had seen some of the most overt and blatant anti-Asian rhetoric in politics and mainstream American culture. The 1970's and 80's had been a time of anxiety for the American economy because of stiff competition in the manufacturing sector from several East Asian countries. Resentment caused by the perception that these Asian competitors were taking American jobs was compounded by xenophobic attitudes that these nations were being diabolically underhanded or unfair in the way that they were developing their economies.

Consequently, American attitudes at the time reflected this hostility. The period was was full of anti-Asian political rhetoric, calls for boycotts, and retaliatory measures (often martial in nature) against Asians supposedly "cheating" their way to economic power. Culturally, the Asian bad guy became a staple for movies throughout the era and a general hostility towards Asian people was pervasive (in fact this is largely still true). This was the backdrop to the racist murder of Vincent Chin in 1982. Chin was bludgeoned to death by two very angry and unemployed white men, because they apparently blamed their unemployment on Asians and wanted to vent their anger through violent murder.

In a strange way, the targeting of Korean immigrants during the LA riots is fundamentally a crime of similar character as the murder of Chin, the only difference being that the Koreans were able to defend themselves more effectively - if this had not been the case my guess is that dozens of Koreans would have been killed. In both cases, widespread cultural xenophobia and hostility towards Asians that had been nurtured in the media, society, and politically, served to normalize the resentment and irrational anger that drove the mob violence. In the aftermath, the anti-Asian racism that made violent anger inevitable also served as a justification for the violence - after all, the Asians are sneakily taking jobs and money out of American communities.

And this is how it was possible to commit the perfect crime. Fully televised, and in full view of the entire world, a racially motivated pogrom that would have made the Nazis proud was carried out against a Korean immigrant community with the full perverse approval of the watching media and a resentful society seemingly rabid about the prospect of hitting Asians where it hurts. In some ways, in the pogrom of 1992, Korean immigrants became the focus for the simmering rage of an economically affronted America. Thus, the hate crime committed against Korean immigrants - and the general anti-Asian racism that enabled it - was marginalized from the story. Instead of becoming a means to highlight pervasive anti-Asian prejudice, the riots highlighted America's tolerance and full acceptance of it and made certain that this aspect of the story would not become part of the accepted history.

Like a perfect crime in an Agatha Christie novel in which a crime of murder becomes hidden within a crime of theft, the story of racist victimization of Korean immigrants was buried (and remains largely buried) and given lesser significance than the stories of the mob who committed it. America's anti-Asian racism ensures that empathy towards their experience will be rejected and their desperate (and brave) acts of self-defence - made necessary by police indifference - will continue to be irrationally and self-righteously condemned.

There were two perpetrators in the pogrom against Korean immigrants - the mob but also (and perhaps even more significantly) the general cultural racism that first enabled it, then provided the means to justify and downplay the racist crime that it was, and finally re-wrote history to exclude this aspect of the story from the accepted accounts.

Just Acting?

Or Moral Dilemma?

For Asian-Americans the single most highly debated subject - after the inter-racial dating disparity(!) - is possibly the issue of media representation. From outright derogatory and demeaning representation to invisibility and white-washing of Asian characters, the issue is definitely a hot-topic in any discourse on the Asian-American experience.

One aspect of this issue is the phenomenon of Asian-American actors who come under heavy criticism from within the community for accepting demeaning roles. This often leads to questions of the obligations (if any) of individual actors faced with the dilemma of working in an industry that only permits them stereotyped roles, and the part these roles might play in perpetuating negative attitudes towards Asian people in society in general. Most recently the broadcasting of the comedy show earlier in this year- 2 Broke Girls - has generated renewed discussion on this issue of negative stereoypes and how Asian actors willing to fill these roles might be contributing to their promotion in society in general.

On one side of the argument some Asian actors feel that accepting a demeaning role is part of a larger process that incorporates Asian characters (albeit negatively at first) into the mainstream consciousness that they believe and hope will at some point tilt the balance of influence such that they, or future, actors will have more input in how Asian characters are depicted. The general belief is that demeaning roles must lead inexorably to more nuanced and less stereotypical depictions. Some Asian actors suggest that such roles are not actually as damaging as we would believe and offer nuanced arguments defending roles that severely limit the qualities of the Asian character being portrayed, or might argue that the role will be filled regardless. Others, suggest that the entertainment industry is driven by artistic creativity and thus one-dimensional roles that uphold demeaning stereotypes should somehow be exempt from politically or socially based criticism.

Of course, it could be suggested (and has been suggested) that media characterizations do not, or cannot, influence, or shape public attitudes or behaviours. Yet, casual observation of America's news and media suggests quite strongly that the media itself is heavily invested in the notion that the things they broadcast can heavily affect how people vote, shop, believe, and behave. A look at history should also give some clues that promoting bias through the broadcast media can alter the moral compass of individuals within a population and enable attitudes to shift to such a degree that horrific atrocities can seem like good ideas - the Nazis and Stalin's Russia are a testament to this.

There is, therefore, very little reason to believe that ubiquitous negative and demeaning media (or political) depictions of Asian people can have anything other than a negative impact on the behaviours and attitudes of mainstream Americans towards Asians - this is particularly acute because there are very few positive representations of Asians that provide a balanced perspective. What all of this adds up to is that American culture has a dialogue going about Asian people that is almost ideological in character, which is derived from xenophobic hostility and is a discourse from which the perspectives of Asian people themselves are excluded. Stereotyping in the mass media is the way that this hostile dialogue is popularly propagated throughout American culture, and a casual observation of the degree of anti-Asian behaviours amongst mainstream America's children provides us with strong evidence of the success and pervasiveness of this dialogue.

This should (but surprisingly, often does not) present us with a dilemma of conscience such that the decision of an Asian actor to accept a demeaning role becomes almost a moral question. This is because pervasive negative depictions can and do shift the moral compass of mainstream America and thus normalize demeaning attitudes and behaviours towards Asian people that would be deemed unacceptable if enacted towards individuals within their own group. Given that American culture has been through over half-a-century of an ideological shift that promotes the ethic of respect and acceptance of people regardless of colour or creed, and is, therefore, not ignorant of issues regarding social and cultural integration, the fact that anti-Asian attitudes continue to be normalized underlines the unethical nature of the practice and underscores the moral nature of the issue.

The apparent failure of the Asian minority of America to recognize the ethical nature of this issue is fundamental to understanding why the issue of media representation continues to be such a problem for us. Most of the time we tend to concieve of stereotyping as a way to offend or antagonize, when in fact, their purpose is to promote a worldview of exclusion and insurmountable differentness of Asian people. Yet, the result of promoting such hostile attitudes towards Asian people may even, perhaps, have far more potentially devastating effects such as negatively influencing America's foreign policy choices in Asia.

Since there are no serious moral sensibilities - under normal circumstances - that view actions that promote harm to others as being morally acceptable courses of action, it would seem obvious that there should be an obligation on the part of aspiring Asian-American actors (or anyone with a moral conscience) to cease participation in roles that do that very thing. No actor would accept a role in a film that promoted or normalized the idea that child-abuse is a good and normal thing (well, Clint Eastwood and some Asians might). No actor would accept a role in a movie that promoted the idea that slavery was morally acceptable. The reason is that these things might go beyond the simple creative process and propagate beliefs that normalize child-abuse or the brutality of slavery and thus have the potential to cause harm and suffering to others. It is a question of ethics and morality.

And this is one of the most overlooked aspects of the drive to empower Asian-Americans. We ourselves diminish the seriousness of hostile depictions by failing to place the practice into an appropriate moral frame work. What we fail to realize is that the central principle that underlies any practice of dehumanization is the denial of moral agency of individuals in the target group. Thus, if Asians lack moral agency, then they are incapable of making ethical choices that are congruent with that of Americans. This in turn justifies xenophobia and prejudicial thinking because it is only the depraved or the lower animals who lack moral agency. Additionally, because of this lack of moral agency, it follows that one need not apply the same moral considerations towards Asians as one would towards one's own group. Thus, the very act of accepting demeaning roles could itself be seen as an example of deficient moral agency and, thus, reinforces dehumanization.

Asian actors - or any public figures, perhaps - happen to choose professions that place them in the front line of America's cultural denigration of Asian people. Thus, it would seem obvious that it is they who must, more than anybody, challenge this process of dehumanization. I would suggest that actors have a moral obligation to boycott demeaning roles - where writers and producers are unwilling to compromise - because a major aspect of combatting dehumanizing images is simply to exercise moral agency. The outcome of such an action would only be positive. It's not enough to accept a role hoping in blind faith that it must necessarily contribute to overall progress at some unspecified time in the future.

Film makers might resort to using "yellow-face" to depict Asian characters in which case at least the racism would be undeniable, or they might write the Asian character out of the script altogether, in which case what has been lost except for a few bucks? These types of demeaning roles for Asians are the entertainment industry's equivalent of the dead-end Macdonalds job that purveys a vile junk food that clogs the arteries of Asian creativity and fosters an obese irrelevance. So why do so many people scramble to do it?

America's Pastime.

Putting Words To The Asian-American Experience.

The Ask A Korean blog posted this extremely eloquent and powerful essay by a guy named Jay Caspian Kang that posits the sport of baseball as one of the means by which Asians can (at least for a while) experience what it might mean to be an American. 

Here are a couple of excerpts.......

"The irony of our multicultural education is that it provides us with only the vocabulary of the thoroughly entitled and the thoroughly disenfranchised. Asian immigrants stand somewhere in between, but lack the context and the words to express our place..............

..........This season, I will watch the game for the stats, the umpire-specific strike zones, the infield shifts, the pitching changes, and the numbers on the scoreboard. But, when I hear the occasional racist comment in the stands that I might reflexively place upon myself, my intellect will begin to pull apart baseball's patriotic metaphor. But thankfully, the process is cyclic, because whenever an Asian player is met with applause, or when I see a young white or Hispanic or African-American kid in a Choo or Kuroda or Matsui t-shirt, the flood of inclusive, metaphoric language will seal the gaps shut and I will once again be awash in halfway hopeful reverence."

How refreshing that an Asian-American can write about his experience without demonizing or blaming his own culture, community, or parents.

Çinli Gibi!

Tsunamis and The Children Of The Corn.

As I've alluded to elsewhere, the Asian experience of racism in America bears some comparison to a campaign of terrorism. For instance, terrorists seek to manipulate, disempower, intimidate, and coerce a population into acceding to various demands and beliefs in order to empower themselves, yet, a society that promotes and normalizes racial hostility, violence, and behaviours through demeaning stereotypes and xenophobic socio-political rhetoric creates a similar relationship between the mainstream and the target minority as the relationship between the terrorist organization and the citizens it targets.

Where I presently reside, the existence of various militant separatist, anarchist, nationalist, and religious groups makes for an interesting cocktail of potential hazards of the explosive kind. Three years ago a bomb was discovered in a Burger King just down the street from my apartment, and earlier this year a suicide bomber martyred himself in one of the City's main squares. Suffice it to say that even though these types of incidences are rare, I would be lying if I were to say that the thought of being caught in a bomb blast whilst sitting in my favourite coffee shop, or shopping at the grocery store, is not always at the back of my mind.

Obscenely, this sense of foreboding that a bomb might go off is analagous to the experience of being Asian in America. Just as in a society that lives with an internal terrorist threat in which its citizens can never foresee the next martyr, but who know that one will come along sooner or later, Asians in America never really know when their race is going to be a problem for someone, somewhere. It could be in a favourite cafe, or whilst shopping at the grocery store, but sooner or later, someone will remind us that being Asian means casually routine harassment and racial baiting, and perhaps even violence.

It is precisely because American culture normalizes racist attitudes and behaviours towards its Asian minority that an environment has been created in which interactions with the mainstream often carries with it the likelihood for racial denigration or even violence. Yet, because depictions of racial violence and harassment forms the core of representations of Asian people in American culture, this is not considered an abnormal state of affairs. Hence, just like someone who is trying to live a normal life knowing that a terrorist's bomb could go off any time or anywhere, many in the Asian minority exists in a state of expectation knowing that an inevitable explosion of casual (or even casually violent) racism will impinge upon their lives. Society is set up to ensure this.

American culture (and hence American society) is abnormal in its xenophobic hostility to the epicanthic fold and the single eyelid. If you refer to the title of this post - "Çinli Gibi" - it is Turkish for "(He  looks) like a Chinese", and I heard a group of small Kurdish kids saying it about me whilst I was walking through my neighbourhood recently. I looked over at them and smiled, to which they responded in accented English, "Hello!" and then giggled. I waved and continued on whilst the kids went back to playing. Just a case of innocent curiosity - how normal! If this had occurred in America, the kids would be likely to have a selection of choice epithets to hurl at me, and the tone of the exchange would likely have been alot uglier.

This offers a great insight into how sick and aberrative American culture is when it comes to its attitudes to its Asian minority because, by contrast, mainstream American kids seem to be armed with a ready supply of racist attitudes and epithets that they are seemingly not discouraged from using in their interactions with Asian people. It is Asian-American children who experience this most intensely - yet what can it mean for American society and the place of the Asian minority within it when America's children go through the most impressionable years of their lives with the belief that it is normal to use racial epithets towards Asian people?

To me the recent outpouring of anti-Japanese feeling in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami is simply confirmation that the practice of rearing American children to think of Asians in dehumanizing ways has been a great success, and that we should not be surprised that this apparent inability to have a human connection with Asian people is so prevalent - it is how many of these people have been taught to think since childhood.

Asians Eat White Kids For Breakfast

With Chopsticks, Of Course.

In the furor created by the recent "Tiger Mom" article in the Wall Street Journal, it would have been easy to miss out on the fact that few, if any, mainstream commentators displayed any kind of skepticism that Amy Chua may have been guilty of over-generalization in her assertions that her periodically vituperative parenting exuberance was somehow representative of the wider parenting philosophy of the Asian community. In the news dissemination industry where journalists are traditionally taught to dig deeper into a story in order to better determine its efficacy, it is especially surprising that this generalization fallacy was so easily overlooked, and perhaps even embraced.

It brought home for me how willingly society seems to accept the idea that Asians can be conceived of as a single unit, where the qualities exhibited by one Asian can be rapidly generalized as the truth for the entire group and applied accordingly. Even worse is the realization that you can make just about any claim about Asians and it's veracity won't be challenged in the mainstream. The reason for this, I believe, is that Asians have become so de-individuated in mainstream culture, and consequently in the general social consciousness, that it has become normative - and simply less troublesome - to dismiss Asians as a collective entity and not see them as individuals with unique qualities and perspectives. This sociological truth enables the mainstream to feel secure in its own superiority, and transforms anti-Asian discrimination into some kind of natural outcome of Asian cultural deficiencies and not mainstream bigotry.

What this all suggests is that when Easterly Asiatic peoples or their cultures are discussed by the mainstream, reason and logic seem to fly out the window, and are replaced by a gullible inability (or lack of desire) to sort through fact from farce, all with the proclivity toward low-key hysteria. In essence what this means is that the mainstream engages with the Asian minority from an irrational position, from which any and all suggestions that reinforce their pre-conceived (usually negative) notions about us are generally accepted without question, and any evidence to the contrary is dismissed as aberrative.

Naturally, this is a prodigious issue for the Asian minority. Here we are trying to engage in dialogue through literature, art, music, politics and so on, but the mainstream we are trying to reach aren't often engaging with us from a place of logic and reason. The mainstream consciousness is so inculcated with the notion of the uniform indistinguishability of Asians that they literally don't see us as individuals and it is because of this cultural pre-disposition to think of Asian people in derogatory ways, that negative beliefs about us are so easily disseminated as truths.

For the Asian minority, this manifests as a challenge to reassess our ways of perceiving the manner of our interactions with the mainstream (and with ourselves). Because our reception by the mainstream is founded upon irrational gut-reactions to de-personalized pejorative stereotypes of its own creation, any challenge to it requires a staunch re-assertion of Asians as individual entities. This approach leaves no room for the kind of backpedaling defense into cultural relativity as exhibited by Chua in her Wall Street Journal article and in her subsequent interviews. Those in the Asian minority who seek to present an honest understanding of their community simply do not have the privilege of using the over-generalizing language employed by Chua (and many others) - this simply undermines their own endeavours.